Bork Slowly Borking

 Yesterday was a good day. Positive. Felt, pretty good health wise, and was, *gasp* kinda happy overall. Which is a rare treat. And a positive sign that I must be getting better if my high water mark is shifting higher. Today. Not so good. And in the late afternoon early evening, pretty rough. Felt ill. Nauseous. Weird shit going on internally on the left. A heart rate that was bouncing around. And for the first time in weeks, a shift of tingles across the left side of my face. Suspiciously I kinda felt ill after hunching forwards for a while. I had the same feeling of unwell way way back in March when my sister drove me back home. I hunched forward in the back seat to talk to them. And after half an hour felt absolutely sick. I put that down to "the ulcer malarkey". Hmmm. On retreating to bed and dozing I felt *really* fucking ill. Like. Oh. I'm dying ? I just lay there, waiting, not stressed, not alarmed, just a sense of... relief. I am writing this now however. So. I d...

Tired as fuck. My own fault, stayed up way too late til gone 3am to get a chance to talk to someone who's a night owl. But. I can't do shit like that anymore. A few days on I still have a major sleep deficit. On the plus side the bad effects from it are less than they have been. I seem to be maintaining my slight improvement in stamina and fatigue. It's subtle, not a hop and a skip, hooray I am back to my old self. More of a nudge, oh, I am not wiping out as often and can do shit. I think this is the first time that an improvement is... properly noticeable. Just because you can complete a task and not flatline. So. Makes it noticeable. I am still being very cautious with what I do..kinda... with the exceptions of stupid outings to Oxford and the like. I'm just over the six month mark that the Harley St Doc thought I should have recovered by. Not recovered. But continuing to improve. That's one hell of a recovery time. Yikes. Pushed my luck a bit last evening, trippe...

 Yesterday went out to Coltishall, sat by the river. Let Athena have a sniff. Caught up with my in laws. "In laws". Heh. My other family. Complicated. Let's just say I count myself lucky to feel like I have more than one family. Today, played some games, ate some good food. I slumped in the afternoon, had to have a nap. But. Eh. Pretty good. Felt pretty good. Getting. Better ? Or just a blip ? Cycle up ? Wait for the cycle down ? That being said. My mood has crashed tonight. 1.55AM. And my demons have come out to play. Ares last breath decides to replay, over and over in vivid detail in my head. Brutal. I can feel all the guilt and doubt rise from the ashes again to plague me. Too soon. Tried harder. And how much I miss him. A solid horrible gnawing stone in the middle of my stomach. I count the passing days. 43. A month and a bit since I last saw him. And again I am thrown into the nihilistic abyss of what the fucking point of all that struggling is. What. At best I can ...

 Tuesday turned out to be a very long day. With a 7+ hour return trip, was probably a no brainer. But was longer than expected. Left at 10am ( after a chiro in the morning ) and got back at 11pm. I think all told I spent 9 hours in a car. Which was utterly stupid. But surprisingly I held up. Didn't flag. Kept on trucking. I was tired when I got home. But normal tired. Tired like normal people. Following day I didn't blow out either. Uh huh. Yesterday.. ehhh... I flagged. But not shockingly. Surprisingly I have held up this week. Hmmm. That's good right ? Don't get me wrong, I slept 13 hours last night. Ha ha. But eh. Positive. There are a couple of changes that have happened in the last 2 weeks or so. 1) I've stopped taking one of my meds. 2) My permanently fucked up butt... has changed. I'm wondering whether either or both of those has nudged a slight uptick in energy levels or not. My stomach has been pretty good for a long while now, so I have taken myself of...

 Relieved that yesterday ended. As I slipped off to sleep Ares haunted my thoughts, an ache in my stomach, then the oblivion of sleep. I don't think that's ever going to go away. I read some stuff on social media about people losing their dogs. Getting new ones. There was good advice. How they don't replace those passed. All unique. Still. It's not a headspace I want to be in. I'm getting better with it. Oh. So. Slowly. Still hurts like fuck and makes me cry. Ho hum. I'm like a broken record. Same shit. Different day. Today was better. Surprisingly I had some energy kicking around. Absolutely no clue why. Random bullshit. So I pottered through work, cursed at devs mistakes bringing systems down. Prettied up some things. And got some stuff done. Andy was probably in the best frame of mind for me today. Didn't bug or chase, but engaged. Sometimes I appreciate that he can just be calm some days. Not be an asshole. Sounds trivial. Isn't. Left side of my face...

 On the face of it, I look pretty normal. At a glance. But yeah. So not true. So this weekend, ended up playing a game for 7 hours or so - a new personal best in my Post Personal Apocalypse Year. Dog tired before I left to go. I was a bit worried I would just flake out. I took precautions. Napped for 2 hours prior. And felt truly terrible afterwards. Excellent. Took a handful of painkillers. And plenty of water. And I rode it out ok. It was nice chilling with people, albeit I was quiet. Got home, felt pretty ok. Today I have been a shit show. A general malaise of ill all day, peaking at nausea and too hot a temperature, tired, lethargic, blehhhhhh. Today's been my worst day I think. It's just an incremental ( or decremental ) step on the, I dont feel well scale of this week. Seems like I am thoroughly into downturn territory. Hopefully, it eases off soon. Perhaps this is the all too predicatble consequence of pushing it this week ? But in any case. The unwellness is real. And g...

 Busy. As foreseen. My nephew came down for an overnight stay. We played a couple of games. Before he got here I had noticed that my energy was declining, harder to get out of bed, and so on the day, I was struggling somewhat. I put  my best face on it, pushed - even though I am not supposed to - and got on with it. It was good to see him. I had a chiro appointment in the afternoon on the day he left. Oh boy. That was a struggle to get out to hit. Energy was real low. I went to bed 60 minutes before the appointment. Alarm on for 30 minutes. It went off. Felt so tired. Stuck it back on for another 5. Then another 5. Dragged myself out. Eesh. Kayley at the chiro chatted happily to me. She's been slowly visiting my recommendations around Norfolk ( she's a Londoner ). She's looking to go to Follys tea room soon as well. Ha. She's a lovely happy person. We always chatter when I am there, even when there's other people in the waiting room. It's nice. Tinnitus has crep...

 Hate to say it. But each morning in bed as time wears on. Work anxiety increases. It's ok once I get up and start moving around. But oof. Beforehand. It drives me awake. I wonder if the stress and whatnot requires a conscious effort to suppress. When the conscious side of me dozes, there is a lack of control. All starts to vaguely sound freudian and ego like. Not withstanding most of that is, imho, a total crock of shit when you push past the very basics. So. Work. Uh huh. Did I say I need a rest ? Ho ho ho. Feeling a bit better today after a shaky start. Had another chiro session. Each day the chiro reveals a little more about himself. Today I learned that the dude is a pro lifer. He didn't outright say that. But heavily implied it when he talked about how people used "different language" to obscure the reality. IE, being pro choice = unborn baby killer. Which is an interesting choice of words and example topic, to highlight that. Perhaps he was just being... contro...

 After starting well yesterday, my mood noticeably went down. We'll call it. Melancholic. The enthusiasm drained to zero, any mild contentment disappeared. The late afternoon sky was beautiful yesterday. Azure blues, orange studded clouds. The kind of sky I can fall into. I stared and fell into it and imagined flying off. And was overcome by a terrible sadness. I am not sure. But I think. It's something going back to childhood. Innocence lost. All the shitty baggage picked up over the years. The awareness of it. The simplicity of flying into the sky. Something like that. But it wasn't a rational step by step process. No direct thinking. Just an emotional response. I've explained this to a lot of people. But. When under continued stress. Or depressed. Or failing to cope ( which are all peas in the same pod and can all devolve into proper depression ), your emotional thresholds come down, the meaning of which is that molehills become mountains. Lets take an imaginary task...

 Despite having the fallout from Hazel, I didn't have a bad day at all yesterday. Though the morning was wobbly. In fact, overall, on balance, good and bad, I haven't had a bad week. I chatted to a whole bunch of people yesterday and made some plans. It grounded me and generally lifted my mood. And then for lunch went out for afternoon tea in Holt. Something I'd had planned since a week ago. Which was very nice. Company was great. Outing was perfect tbh. Pulled me entirely out of where I was and was another reminder that people are nice. I took Athena out in the morning, just before leaving for the day. First time I've walked her on her own. Which was another bit of a... well... just one of those moments. Just me and Athena. On a walk. No Poppy. And. Of course. No Ares. No distractions from the very stark awareness, hey, did you know you're missing a dog. Yes. I could feel myself looking for Ares. Seeing him walking with us. Uggggghhhhhhhh. Jesus. Where have you gon...

 I was having a pretty good day yesterday, all things considered. Even the chiro said I seemed more upbeat. A perfect time for Hazel to meltdown then. She's been staying at her place for the last few days to "tidy it up for an inspection". Neither of which happened. I picked her up in the afternoon, she wasn't in a great mood, and took her to her chiro session. Within 5 minutes of stepping back in the door on getting back, she kicked off. Stomping around. Huffing. Oh no. I gently tried to tease out what's wrong. I hadn't done her washing. Ok. She had no clean clothes. Oook. I apologised, I didn't know she needed her clothes cleaned ( also, what was she doing for the last 3 days ). Then it just got worse. I had used a clean towel ! Uh. Yes. You said not to use the red one. Now I have no towel !! Ok. Well, we can wash it. You don't listen she says. Ho hum. It went downhill from there. Picking on literally everything and nothing. How I did nothing for her...

 Been a bit better last few days. Stuffing my face a bit as well. Tsk. Ares is still a hole. I suspect that hole is always gonna be there now. Don't get me restarted on life and death. I pushed back at work yesterday. For the umpteenth day on the trot I had to stop what I was doing, look at something else. Oh. Multi tasking you think. Yeah. No. It's got to the point where I have half a dozen projects none of which are completed, each of which has stopped, all to service the next ooh ooh ooh must do thing. The very opposite of planning and scheduling. I've lost track of some of the bits that are stalled from a month ago. So. I pushed back. Stop this. This is getting us nowhere, can't constantly be incompleting stuff and starting something new. Jesus. Ho hum. I think it has got to the point we need a proper schedule. Andy confessed to also being lost with project statuses. I think his madness has spread to the entire stack. Needs to be addressed. Sigh. I'll say it aga...

 Still got a bit of energy in me. How suspicious ! House is quiet with Hazel gone. Did some houseplant stuff yesterday. Wanted to get out and pick up a few pots and plants. I do this from time to time. Have a spurt of wanting plenty of green in the house. Well. When I am in a better frame of mind anyway. Hazel decided she wanted to come with me. So we did that. It was good in places. Not good in other places. Her mental state makes her.. tricky. Finding fault with everyone and everything she wandered around in a state of half mania and half snarl. She snapped at the lady behind us in the queue on the way out to step back, we're still in a pandemic. A fair point. But. Definitely didn't need to be delivered with venom. It could have been done nicely. She wasn't *that* close. Awkward. Unpleasant. I hunched my shoulders with a grimace and waited for her to lay into me for reacting like that. I dont think she noticed thankfully. She snarled at the upcoming checkout. She said she...

 Had a little more energy the last few days. Not saying much, I still get tired after doing stuff, and yesterday, exhaustion dogged me for most of the day, but I trooped on. Like a stuck record, Ares is never out of my thoughts each and every day. In that torturing way I imagine Ares where I am, or if he hadn't seen something. He never saw this. Over the weekend I also tortured myself extremely well with his "lasts". Last time he walked out of the door. Last time he got in the car. That hits very hard. Last time out of the front door kills me. Stupid perhaps. But. An awful reminder that he left the house and never came back. Absolutely fucking brutal. Where has my boy gone ? I miss him terribly. I still don't know what to do with it all. There is no solution to this. No fixing. A raw wound. I am beginning to realise this will stay with me forever. Maybe it heals in others. I suspect in me it's just going to give me a new dark shadow. I can't look at a piece of...

 Felt better yesterday. A bit more energy. A bit less tired. Much more reasonable. I had a chat with audiology department at the hospital. They were very helpful. My ears they said, were in normal bounds, my right ear was worse than my left ear. However. They suspected the nerve, carrying signals from my ear to my brain was... well.. at the very least had had some difficult times. Apparently my loss of hearing then sensitivity et al was textbook. Something happaned to your hearing she said. Your brain then panicked and turned the volume up to 11 trying in vain to hear something. Then it comes back and the volume is too loud. Hence it hurts. She said it could well have been viral. Some damage to the nerves might have occurred. Could be covid. Could be another virus. She also said it could be the whole "Functional Neurological Disorder". Brain / nerves misfiring and generally being crazy. She said they also typically see such things in FND. She agreed with the Harley street doc...